The Impact of Generational Trauma

We inherit many of our physical attributes from our family tree -- our straight hair, our freckles, our left-handedness. Did you know that trauma can be passed down from generation to generation? You may be completely unaware of the generational trauma in your past, but it can be the key to what’s holding back your future. It can affect the way you think, the way you interact and communicate with others and the way you handle stress, and not necessarily in a good way.

I’ve been teaching about the need to heal generational trauma for 30 years. That theory hasn’t necessarily been embraced by many of my colleagues. Recent scientific research, however, backs this theory up, showing that trauma can be passed down through the paternal line through the father’s sperm. The most recent study results were released at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in San Diego last fall and have been reported by Scientific American, the New York Times and Science Daily, just to name a few well-known publications.

I’ve seen this recorded in ancient manuscripts and in my own practice, seeing a patient in my counseling office with inherited trauma that is the same as their parents or grandparents.

To me, this doesn’t mean it’s nature or nurture. It’s both!

I had a client who suffered from chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia. The pain got to the point where she couldn’t work, she couldn’t be a good mother, she couldn’t be a good wife. Naturally, she felt both guilt and anger.

What we found out through working together is that she had a significant family trauma event going back several generations. One of the grandmothers in her lineage had experienced overwhelming trauma during the Civil War. Her family lost everything. Their home was burned to the ground and her entire family was killed before her very eyes.

After that, she developed health problems and then every female after her developed similar type health problems, including my client.

Once we determined the root cause of her problem, we used my energy techniques to heal these traumatic memories, and in just a matter of months her self worth, anger and guilt went away, and she began to feel better physically.

Now you may be thinking to yourself, “wait a minute, I don’t have any traumatic events like this impacting my family tree” That may be true, but what makes generational trauma even more complicated are something I call popsicle memories.

I’ve discussed “popsicle memories” here on my blog before. These are seemingly innocent moments where something made an indelible mark on your subconscious. I call them popsicle memories because of one client in particular who could not pinpoint why there was always underlying strain between her and her mother. We finally determined it could be traced back to a seemingly innocent childhood moment where she threw a fit because her mother gave her sister a popsicle but didn’t give her one because she hadn’t eaten a good meal.

How is this even possible that her subconscious would hold on to something that seems so innocent all these years, causing a divisive relationship with her mother? Because this happened when my client was a little girl, her brain was in delta theta brain wave state. Until about 5 years old we live in this state and it’s the only time that we do and it can really impact our subconscious.

One of the characteristics of delta theta brain wave state is you don’t have the mental ability to filter what people say. If someone says there is a monster in the closet, then you believe them. If you’re playing football in the backyard with your dad and he jokingly says you are never going to be a good football player, you’ll believe that deep down inside. Now it doesn’t mean that will be the case, but it will make it more difficult.

So many of my clients say I don’t have any abuse or trauma in my past. But I haven’t met a client who doesn’t have a trauma memory even a popsicle memory, that impacts them. In order to reach your full potential and to heal the source of illness and disease, you have to heal and address generational issues.

The problem is that most things won’t heal them. This trauma is protected by the unconscious mind as part of your survival instinct. How? Well trauma memories are labeled by the unconscious mind largely by how much adrenaline was released at a negative time. Your unconscious mind actually protects these trauma memories as a way of protecting you from getting hurt and experiencing this trauma again. But unless that memory is healed, you’ll go on subconsciously reacting to trauma you don’t even know you’re holding on to!

Let’s say a girl broke my heart in college. I’m naturally going to be a little cautious in the next relationship. That’s a very obvious situation, but it also happens in the not so obvious situations. We go through the day consciously and unconsciously protecting ourselves from things that are never going to happen.

The tools I have developed are among the few things that can and do heal those generational issues. I’ve seen a lot of people for which they were the lynchpin to what was holding them back. And while not everyone has intense trauma in their ancestry to heal, everyone has popsicle memories.

I recommend using my Trilogy and Memory Engineering methods to discover and heal any traumatic memories your subconscious mind is holding on to. Then you can live your life the way you were meant to, free from unhealed memories that may be holding you back!